Cloud Migration Cookbook: A Guide To Moving Your Apps To The CloudNew Relic
The process of building new apps or migrating existing apps to a cloud-based platform is complex. There are hundreds of paths you can take and only a few will make sense for you and your business. Get a step-by-step guide on how to plan for a successful app migration.
Analyze key aspects to be considered before embarking on your cloud journey. The presentation outlines the strategies, approach, and choices that need to be made, to ensure a smooth transition to the cloud.
Microsoft Azure is the only hybrid cloud to help you migrate your apps, data, and infrastructure with cost-effective and flexible paths. At this event you’ll learn how thousands of customers have migrated to Azure, at their own pace and with high confidence by using a reliable methodology, flexible and powerful tools, and proven partner expertise. Come to this event to learn how Azure can help you save—before, during, and after migration, and how it offers unmatched value during every stage of your cloud migration journey. Learn about assessments, migration offers, and cost management tools to help you migrate with confidence.
Azure Arc is a solution that simplifies management across different hybrid clouds or multi-clouds. Azure Arc extends Azure management and security beyond the walls of Azure to other cloud platforms or on-premises environments enabling you to make use of Azure services to manage infrastructure at these environments. In this session, you will be introduced to Azure Arc, why should you use it and how to make use of it in different scenarios.
On-premise to Microsoft Azure Cloud Migration.Emtec Inc.
This presentation sheds light on migrating on-premise apps to Microsoft Azure cloud. It also highlights the technical capabilities of Microsoft Azure cloud services.
Cloud Migration Cookbook: A Guide To Moving Your Apps To The CloudNew Relic
The process of building new apps or migrating existing apps to a cloud-based platform is complex. There are hundreds of paths you can take and only a few will make sense for you and your business. Get a step-by-step guide on how to plan for a successful app migration.
Analyze key aspects to be considered before embarking on your cloud journey. The presentation outlines the strategies, approach, and choices that need to be made, to ensure a smooth transition to the cloud.
Microsoft Azure is the only hybrid cloud to help you migrate your apps, data, and infrastructure with cost-effective and flexible paths. At this event you’ll learn how thousands of customers have migrated to Azure, at their own pace and with high confidence by using a reliable methodology, flexible and powerful tools, and proven partner expertise. Come to this event to learn how Azure can help you save—before, during, and after migration, and how it offers unmatched value during every stage of your cloud migration journey. Learn about assessments, migration offers, and cost management tools to help you migrate with confidence.
Azure Arc is a solution that simplifies management across different hybrid clouds or multi-clouds. Azure Arc extends Azure management and security beyond the walls of Azure to other cloud platforms or on-premises environments enabling you to make use of Azure services to manage infrastructure at these environments. In this session, you will be introduced to Azure Arc, why should you use it and how to make use of it in different scenarios.
On-premise to Microsoft Azure Cloud Migration.Emtec Inc.
This presentation sheds light on migrating on-premise apps to Microsoft Azure cloud. It also highlights the technical capabilities of Microsoft Azure cloud services.
Cloud Migration: Moving Data and Infrastructure to the CloudSafe Software
The movement to the cloud is accelerating across industries. This is driven by the maturing of cloud technology, and by the sudden shift to a more distributed and remote workforce.
The cloud has many strengths from no longer having to purchase and manage infrastructure to its ability to grow seamlessly and to scale up and down to meet demands.
With all these benefits, many organizations are preparing cloud migration strategies (such as on-premise to the cloud) and are finding themselves overwhelmed by the process.
There are many things to consider when planning a cloud migration but the process does not have to be complicated or costly due to private services. Join this webinar to learn how you get started with your cloud migration today!
Azure Site Recovery - BC/DR - Migrations & assessments in 60 minutes!Johan Biere
Gain high level understanding of various challenges faced by organizations in planning their Migration and BC/DR Strategy for applications in Azure and Hybrid.
Learn about the capabilities that make Azure the ideal destination for your applications, data, and infrastructure. You will get clear, scenario-based guidance on how to approach your technical migration & innovation journeys. Understand how to migrate different on-premises applications to Azure, including moving them to Azure IaaS Using ASR with Hyper-V Assessments & Agentless migration.
With Azure Arc customers can manage virtual machines, Kubernetes clusters and data services on-premises, at service providers and in other clouds from a single view in Azure using the innovative security, monitoring and policy tools from Azure they appreciate. In this session you will get an introduction to Azure Arc and we will dive deeper into Azure Arc for Kubernetes specifically.
The cloud is all the rage. Does it live up to its hype? What are the benefits of the cloud? Join me as I discuss the reasons so many companies are moving to the cloud and demo how to get up and running with a VM (IaaS) and a database (PaaS) in Azure. See why the ability to scale easily, the quickness that you can create a VM, and the built-in redundancy are just some of the reasons that moving to the cloud a “no brainer”. And if you have an on-prem datacenter, learn how to get out of the air-conditioning business!
Building A Cloud Strategy PowerPoint Presentation SlidesSlideTeam
It covers all the important concepts and has relevant templates which cater to your business needs. This complete deck has PPT slides on Building A Cloud Strategy PowerPoint Presentation Slides with well suited graphics and subject driven content. This deck consists of total of twenty five slides. All templates are completely editable for your convenience. You can change the colour, text and font size of these slides. You can add or delete the content as per your requirement. Get access to this professionally designed complete deck presentation by clicking the download button below. https://bit.ly/2LuZsQP
Capgemini Cloud Assessment - A Pathway to Enterprise Cloud MigrationFloyd DCosta
Capgemini Cloud Assessment offers a methodology and a roadmap for Cloud migration to reduce decision risks, promote rapid user adoption and lower TCO of IT investments. It leverages pre-built accelerators such as ROI calculators, risk models and portfolio analyzers and provides three powerful deliverables in just six to eight weeks:
There are options beyond a straight forward lift and shift into Azure IaaS. What are your options? Learn how Azure helps modernize applications faster with containers and how you can use serverless to add additional functionality while keeping your production codebase 'clean'. We'll also learn how to incorporate DevOps throughout your apps lifecycle and take advantage of data-driven intelligence. Demo intensive session integrating the likes of Service Fabric, AKS VSTS and more.
Azure Arc offers simplified management, faster app development, and consistent Azure services. Easily organize, govern, and secure Windows, Linux, SQL Server, and Kubernetes clusters across data centers, the edge, and multicloud environments right from Azure. Architect, design, and build cloud-native apps anywhere without sacrificing central visibility and control. Get Azure innovation and cloud benefits by deploying consistent Azure data, application, and machine learning services on any infrastructure.
Gain central visibility, operations, and compliance
Centrally manage a wide range of resources including Windows and Linux servers, SQL server, Kubernetes clusters, and Azure services.
Establish central visibility in the Azure portal and enable multi-environment search with Azure Resource Graph.
Meet governance and compliance standards for apps, infrastructure, and data with Azure Policy.
Delegate access and manage security policies for resources using role-based access control (RBAC) and Azure Lighthouse.
Organize and inventory assets through a variety of Azure scopes, such as management groups, subscriptions, resource groups, and tags.
Learn more about hybrid and multicloud management in the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure.
An Overview of Best Practices for Large Scale Migrations - AWS Transformation...Amazon Web Services
Whether you are moving a small application or entire datacenters, migrating to the cloud can be a complex process. In this session, we will share some of the common challenges that our customers face on their journey to the cloud and discuss how these challenges can be overcome. We will outline the patterns of success that we have observed from partnering with hundreds of customers on their large-scale migrations as well as highlight the mechanisms we have created to help our customers migrate faster.
About the Event:
AWS Transformation Day is designed for enterprise organizations migrating to the cloud to become more responsive, agile and innovative, while staying secure and compliant. Join us for this one-day event and we’ll share our experiences of helping enterprise customers accelerate the pace of migration and adoption of strategic services.
Who should attend?
This event is recommended for IT and business leaders who are looking to create sustainable benefits and a competitive advantage by using the AWS Cloud. CIOs, CTOs, CISOs, CDOs, CFOs, IT leaders and IT professionals, enterprise developers, business decision makers, and finance executives.
Cloud Migration Checklist | Microsoft Azure MigrationIntellika
This checklist walks you through the steps to plan, assess, and begin your cloud migration, and offers resources to help you move to the cloud with Microsoft Azure.
Learn more - https://www.intellika.in/cloud-migration/
According to IDC “By 2020, consumption-based procurement in data centers will have eclipsed traditional procurement. Reducing waste, risk, and cost are goals of every IT organization. But because it’s hard to predict how much capacity you might need, the traditional model of purchasing infrastructure upfront often results in provisioning capacity that’s too high or too low. By moving to a consumption-based Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) model and eliminating over provisioning, Forrester found that HPE customers experienced a 30% savings. At this dinner you'll hear how you can utilize HPE GreenLake consumption services to save IT costs while maintaining in-house control of mission-critical workloads and creating a usage based on-site compelling on-premises cloud experience.
Cloud Migration: Moving Data and Infrastructure to the CloudSafe Software
The movement to the cloud is accelerating across industries. This is driven by the maturing of cloud technology, and by the sudden shift to a more distributed and remote workforce.
The cloud has many strengths from no longer having to purchase and manage infrastructure to its ability to grow seamlessly and to scale up and down to meet demands.
With all these benefits, many organizations are preparing cloud migration strategies (such as on-premise to the cloud) and are finding themselves overwhelmed by the process.
There are many things to consider when planning a cloud migration but the process does not have to be complicated or costly due to private services. Join this webinar to learn how you get started with your cloud migration today!
Azure Site Recovery - BC/DR - Migrations & assessments in 60 minutes!Johan Biere
Gain high level understanding of various challenges faced by organizations in planning their Migration and BC/DR Strategy for applications in Azure and Hybrid.
Learn about the capabilities that make Azure the ideal destination for your applications, data, and infrastructure. You will get clear, scenario-based guidance on how to approach your technical migration & innovation journeys. Understand how to migrate different on-premises applications to Azure, including moving them to Azure IaaS Using ASR with Hyper-V Assessments & Agentless migration.
With Azure Arc customers can manage virtual machines, Kubernetes clusters and data services on-premises, at service providers and in other clouds from a single view in Azure using the innovative security, monitoring and policy tools from Azure they appreciate. In this session you will get an introduction to Azure Arc and we will dive deeper into Azure Arc for Kubernetes specifically.
The cloud is all the rage. Does it live up to its hype? What are the benefits of the cloud? Join me as I discuss the reasons so many companies are moving to the cloud and demo how to get up and running with a VM (IaaS) and a database (PaaS) in Azure. See why the ability to scale easily, the quickness that you can create a VM, and the built-in redundancy are just some of the reasons that moving to the cloud a “no brainer”. And if you have an on-prem datacenter, learn how to get out of the air-conditioning business!
Building A Cloud Strategy PowerPoint Presentation SlidesSlideTeam
It covers all the important concepts and has relevant templates which cater to your business needs. This complete deck has PPT slides on Building A Cloud Strategy PowerPoint Presentation Slides with well suited graphics and subject driven content. This deck consists of total of twenty five slides. All templates are completely editable for your convenience. You can change the colour, text and font size of these slides. You can add or delete the content as per your requirement. Get access to this professionally designed complete deck presentation by clicking the download button below. https://bit.ly/2LuZsQP
Capgemini Cloud Assessment - A Pathway to Enterprise Cloud MigrationFloyd DCosta
Capgemini Cloud Assessment offers a methodology and a roadmap for Cloud migration to reduce decision risks, promote rapid user adoption and lower TCO of IT investments. It leverages pre-built accelerators such as ROI calculators, risk models and portfolio analyzers and provides three powerful deliverables in just six to eight weeks:
There are options beyond a straight forward lift and shift into Azure IaaS. What are your options? Learn how Azure helps modernize applications faster with containers and how you can use serverless to add additional functionality while keeping your production codebase 'clean'. We'll also learn how to incorporate DevOps throughout your apps lifecycle and take advantage of data-driven intelligence. Demo intensive session integrating the likes of Service Fabric, AKS VSTS and more.
Azure Arc offers simplified management, faster app development, and consistent Azure services. Easily organize, govern, and secure Windows, Linux, SQL Server, and Kubernetes clusters across data centers, the edge, and multicloud environments right from Azure. Architect, design, and build cloud-native apps anywhere without sacrificing central visibility and control. Get Azure innovation and cloud benefits by deploying consistent Azure data, application, and machine learning services on any infrastructure.
Gain central visibility, operations, and compliance
Centrally manage a wide range of resources including Windows and Linux servers, SQL server, Kubernetes clusters, and Azure services.
Establish central visibility in the Azure portal and enable multi-environment search with Azure Resource Graph.
Meet governance and compliance standards for apps, infrastructure, and data with Azure Policy.
Delegate access and manage security policies for resources using role-based access control (RBAC) and Azure Lighthouse.
Organize and inventory assets through a variety of Azure scopes, such as management groups, subscriptions, resource groups, and tags.
Learn more about hybrid and multicloud management in the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure.
An Overview of Best Practices for Large Scale Migrations - AWS Transformation...Amazon Web Services
Whether you are moving a small application or entire datacenters, migrating to the cloud can be a complex process. In this session, we will share some of the common challenges that our customers face on their journey to the cloud and discuss how these challenges can be overcome. We will outline the patterns of success that we have observed from partnering with hundreds of customers on their large-scale migrations as well as highlight the mechanisms we have created to help our customers migrate faster.
About the Event:
AWS Transformation Day is designed for enterprise organizations migrating to the cloud to become more responsive, agile and innovative, while staying secure and compliant. Join us for this one-day event and we’ll share our experiences of helping enterprise customers accelerate the pace of migration and adoption of strategic services.
Who should attend?
This event is recommended for IT and business leaders who are looking to create sustainable benefits and a competitive advantage by using the AWS Cloud. CIOs, CTOs, CISOs, CDOs, CFOs, IT leaders and IT professionals, enterprise developers, business decision makers, and finance executives.
Cloud Migration Checklist | Microsoft Azure MigrationIntellika
This checklist walks you through the steps to plan, assess, and begin your cloud migration, and offers resources to help you move to the cloud with Microsoft Azure.
Learn more - https://www.intellika.in/cloud-migration/
According to IDC “By 2020, consumption-based procurement in data centers will have eclipsed traditional procurement. Reducing waste, risk, and cost are goals of every IT organization. But because it’s hard to predict how much capacity you might need, the traditional model of purchasing infrastructure upfront often results in provisioning capacity that’s too high or too low. By moving to a consumption-based Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) model and eliminating over provisioning, Forrester found that HPE customers experienced a 30% savings. At this dinner you'll hear how you can utilize HPE GreenLake consumption services to save IT costs while maintaining in-house control of mission-critical workloads and creating a usage based on-site compelling on-premises cloud experience.
Deep dive: Citrix CloudPlatform for Infrastructure as a ServiceCitrix
Citrix innovation continues to advance our cloud management technology at a rapid rate to keep pace with emerging enterprise customer needs. Learn about the core capabilities and newest innovations for Citrix CloudPlatform, which is powering the world's largest clouds today. CloudPlatform provides the latest and most advanced open source software platform to build highly scalable and reliable cloud computing environments. You’ll also see why Citrix cloud solutions differ from VMware and OpenStack offerings.
Rightscale Webinar: Designing Private & Hybrid Clouds (Hosted by Citrix)RightScale
Do you want to turn your existing data center into a private cloud? Exploring how to integrate your private cloud with a public cloud? In this webinar, we will discuss key considerations when designing a private cloud from internal resources and best practices for architecture of private and hybrid clouds. The webinar will include a demonstration, plus real-world examples of customers running their private cloud implementations on Citrix CloudPlatform using RightScale.
Topics to be covered:
• When to use private clouds
• Hardware selection
• Reference architectures and design considerations
• Use cases and real-life scenarios
• Managing your cloud resources effectively
• How do I respond to the pressure to
cut costs, reduce risk and
complexity?
• How do I react more quickly to take
advantage of new opportunities?
• How do I move my data center
architecture into the future?
• A lot of buzz on cloud, where is the
best place to start and how?
Back that *aa s up – bridging multiple clouds for bursting and redundancyRightScale
Back that *aaS up – Bridging Multiple Clouds for Bursting and Redundancy
Peder Ulander, VP of Product Marketing, Cloud Platform Group, Citrix Systems
Bridging multiple cloud computing environments allows enterprises to plan for peak usage even while only building capacity for today’s needs. Using CloudStack, CloudBridge and RightScale can enable Enterprise IT to extend resource pools beyond physical datacenter boundaries and leverage additional private clouds or public clouds to meet peak usage requirements and smoothly manage planned or unplanned capacity spikes.
Good news from the Worldwide Consulting Desktop & Apps (DnA) team! We’ve just finished updating theVirtual Desktop Handbook for XenDesktop 7, StoreFront 2.0 and XenServer 6.2.
The Virtual Desktop Handbook is an architect’s guide to desktop virtualization. It provides you with the methodology, experience and best practices you need to successfully design your own desktop virtualization solution.
Updates in this release include:
Resource requirements for Windows 8 and Server 2012
XD controller sizing
XenDesktop 7 policy guidelines
Database sizing for XenDesktop 7
SQL 2012 chapter
StoreFront 2.0 chapter
32-bit or 64-bit desktop OS guidance
Desktop group & StoreFront integration
In addition, we’ve also included a Citrix policy quick reference spreadsheet so that you can quickly identify default, baseline and template settings from XenDesktop 5 / XenApp 6 all the way up to XenDesktop 7. Thanks go out to Michael Havens, Maria Chang and Uzair Ali for creating this great reference spreadsheet.
I hope you find this handbook useful during your next desktop virtualization project.
And we’re not done yet, future updates will include:
Bandwidth
Hyper-V 2012
PVS 7
User data
And more …
The Virtual Desktop Handbook is not the only resource to guide you through your desktop virtualization journey. Citrix also provides Project Accelerator; an interactive online tool creating customized sizing and design recommendations based on the methodology, best practices and expert advice identified within this handbook.
You can still reach the XenDesktop 5 handbook using the old URL – CTX136546
Andy Baker – Architect
Worldwide Consulting
Desktop & Apps Team
http://blogs.citrix.com/2013/10/10/new-xendesktop-7-handbook-published/
Reference architecture dir and es - finalNuno Alves
Citrix Director with EdgeSight provides a complete troubleshooting window to quickly resolve issues around desktops or applications. Previous versions of XenApp leveraged EdgeSight, while XenDesktop deployments looked to Director for assistance. Starting in XenDesktop 7, these two great technologies have been merged into one central point for troubleshooting.
The purpose of this document will be to provide you an overviewof all the necessary parts required to give your company a holistic view. With this being a new product with new features, this document will provide administrators the tools to feel comfortable moving forward with monitoring of a XenDesktop 7 deployment.
This document will cover the configuration of the Director server, as well as how to interface with the Insight Center provided from our NetScaler product line. For more of an overview of the EdgeSight product, please reference the whitepapersfound at www.citrix.com/xendesktop.
http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX139051
Provisioning server high_availability_considerations2Nuno Alves
The purpose of this document is to give the target audience an overview about the critical components of a Citrix
Provisioning Server infrastructure with regards to a high availability implementation. These considerations focus on the
following areas:
• Virtual Disk (vDisk) Storage
• Write Cache Placement
• SQL Database
• TFTP Service
• DHCP Service
Xd planning guide - storage best practicesNuno Alves
The Citrix Storage planning guide provides a list of best practices, recommendations and
performance related tips that cover the most critical areas of storage integration with Citrix
XenDesktop. It is not intended as a comprehensive guide for planning and configuring storage
infrastructures, nor as a storage training handbook.
Due to scope, this guide provides some device-specific information. For additional device- specific
configuration, Citrix suggests reviewing the storage vendor’s documentation, the storage vendor’s
hardware compatibility list, and contacting the vendor’s technical support if necessary
This document is an introduction to Disk Storage technologies and its terminology. Within this
document basic disk and storage architectures as well as storage protocols and common fault
tolerance technologies will be discussed. It is not intended as a comprehensive guide for planning
and configuring storage infrastructures, nor as a storage training handbook.
Due to scope, this guide provides some device-specific information. For additional device- specific
configuration, Citrix suggests reviewing the storage vendor‘s documentation, the storage vendor‘s
hardware compatibility list, and contacting the vendor‘s technical support if necessary.
For design best practices and planning guidance, Citrix recommends reviewing the Storage Best
Practices and Planning Guide (http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX130632)
This document describes how XenServer provides and keeps track of the storage supplied to its guests. The first section
is a reminder of how Linux looks at storage and the second section builds on that to explain XenServer storage. Basic
knowledge of Linux is required, as some standard tools are used.
XenDesktop relies on the hypervisor for many core functions, including VM creation, power operations, performance and redundancy. Therefore, it is important that you take the time to design an appropriate hypervisor infrastructure (XenServer, Hyper-V or vSphere). Otherwise, you may experience performance, functionality or even reliability issues.
Most information required to design a XenDesktop deployment on your chosen hypervisor platform is available publicly, but it can be hard to find since it’s spread across a multitude of knowledge base articles or white papers. In order to simplify and speed-up the design process, we’re in the process of consolidating the information that you need into a single document and augmenting it with recommendations and best practices. We’ve just finished incorporating the Hyper-V 2008 R2 and SCVMM 2012 planning section into the latest release of the Citrix Virtual Desktop Handbook, which includes important design decisions relating to this hypervisor, for example:
Selecting and sizing the right physical hardware for virtual machines
Knowing what storage options available for Hyper-V 2008 R2
What type of networks to build on the Hyper-V host
How to size the SCVMM servers
Designing a highly available SCVMM solution
Planning an effective failover cluster
The products covered in this current release of the handbook include XenDesktop 5.6, XenApp 6.5, Provisioning Services 6.x and XenClient Enterprise 4.5. A version of the Virtual Desktop Handbook covering XenDesktop 7.x, Provisioning Services 7, Hyper V 2012 R2 and SCVMM 2012 R2 is in the works with an initial release scheduled later in Q4. As always your feedback is welcomed.
http://blogs.citrix.com/2013/09/05/citrix-virtual-desktop-handbook-hyper-v-update/
CTX138217 - IntelliCache Reduction in IOPS: XenDesktop 5.6 FP1 on XenServer 6.1 - Citrix Knowledge Center http://ow.ly/o3Ma4
The purpose of this document is to provide testing results based on MCS-delivered streamed virtual desktops leveraging IntelliCache
NetScaler Deployment Guide for XenDesktop7Nuno Alves
This guide demonstrates how to deploy Citrix NetScaler in conjunction with Citrix XenDesktop 7 with a focus on both simplicity in configuration and advanced features not easily delivered with other products. This guide shows how to provision the XenDesktop 7 infrastructure, the NetScaler appliance and NetScaler Insight Center services to extend Citrix virtual desktop infrastructure and services to remote users in small to medium-size enterprises.
Citrix CloudPlatform works within multiple enterprise strategies and mandates, as well as supporting multiple cloud strategies from a provider perspective. As an initial step beyond traditional server virtualization, many organizations are looking to private cloud implementations as a means to satisfy flexibility while still retaining control over service delivery. The private cloud may be hosted by the IT organization itself, or sourced from a managed service provider, but the net goals of total control and security without compromising SLAs is achieved.For some organizations, the managed service model is stepped up one level with all resources sourced from a hosted solution. SLA guarantees and security concerns often dictate the types of providers an enterprise will look towards. At the far end of the spectrum are public cloud providers with pay as you go pricing structures and elastic scaling. Since public clouds often abstract details such as network topology, a hybrid cloud strategy allows IT to retain control over key aspects of their operations such as data, while leveraging the benefits of elastic public cloud capacity.
Citrix CloudPlatform takes the compute, network and storage resource present in modern data centers and layers on a cloud orchestration layer to provide on demand access to that infrastructure. Within Citrix CloudPlatform an organization can be separate department or business unit within an organization, or for public cloud operators can be customers or resellers of cloud services. Both organizations and direct users interact with Citrix CloudPlatform either through the CloudStack API model, or through the CloudPlatform management UI.
Empower users to “serve themselves”— removing IT from the critical path of the service deliveryAutomate previously labour intensive tasks, helping to reduce IT operation costs and deliver fasterReduces complexity and variability by using standard workloads which ensures consistency with each application and service deploymentRetains visibility into resource allocation and line of business usage on a real-time levelIncreased server/admin ratio and delivers benefits of scale— even if deployed globally
When designing a cloud, the first step should be defining the types of services to be offered. Once those services are understood, they will in turn dictate the implementation details to support them. Citrix CloudPlatform flexibility supports a number of service definitions, and implementation topologies allowing a top down design which can be logically implemented.
The first step in defining service offerings are the compute and disk nodes. A compute node starts with CPU options of speed and quantity of vCPUs, then adds in RAM options. The compute node maps to an underlying template supporting the operating system. This template is the “root” disk for the compute offering. Compute nodes without “root” disks are not supported, but a “root” disk does not need to have a pre-installed operating system. Compute nodes can have multiple “data” data disks to support the service offering, and usage monitoring data is retained by Citrix CloudPlatform.
What is it?Network OfferingsCitrix CloudPlatform fully supports the concept of multi-tenant networks within a data center. It is desirable to allow different classes of service to be provided to the same multi-tenant networks. For example, while the underlying physical wiring may be the same for two tenants, tenant A may only need a simple firewall protection for their website while tenant B may be running a web server farm and requires a scalable firewall solution, load balancing solution, and alternate networks for accessing their database backend. In CloudStack 3.0, these concepts are being rolled out to enable cloud providers to do the following things:Bundle different types of network services into network offerings to be offered to their users.Allow different network service providers to be used on the same network.Offer up-selling to end users who need better class of service on their network.Provide different ways for a network to be accessed by the end users. i.e. via projects.Bundling of network services to be provided on a networkSimilar to Service Offering and Disk OfferingAllows not only network services to be specified but also the provider of the network serviceCreated at CloudStack level by Cloud OperatorFiltered at zone level based on the network service providers available in a zoneCan be upgraded/downgraded by the Cloud CustomerLoad balancer (NetScaler/F5 BIGIP) devices pool per physical networkFirewall (SRX) devices pool per physical networkSupport for multi-vendor (F5 and NetScaler) load balancers on same physical networkNetwork offerings provides choice of dedicated/shared load balancing serviceNetwork is a broadcast domain (Think 192.168.1.1/24)Network characteristics are determined by services providedVirtual network in 2.x is Isolated Network w/ Source NAT ServiceDirect Tagged network in 2.x is Shared Network w/ DHCP ServiceAccount Specific Direct Tagged Network in 2.x is Isolated Network w/ DHCP ServiceBasic Zone concept still appliesNetwork OfferingsThe administrator starts off with deciding the network offerings they want to provide throughout their entire cloud offering. Network Offerings group together a set of network services such as firewall, dhcp, dns, etc.Network Offerings allow specific network service providers to be specified.Network Offerings can be tagged to specifically choose the underlying network.Network Offerings have the following states: Disabled, Enabled, Inactive. All Network Offerings are created in the Disabled state. Once a network offering has been configured to the correct stateCertain Network Offerings are for used by the system only. This means end users cannot see them.Network Offerings can be updated to enable/disable services and providers. Once that is done, it is up to the administrator to reprogram all of the networks that are based on that network offering.Network Offerings tags cannot be updated. However, the tags on the physical networks can be updated and deleted.Citrix CloudPlatform is deployed with three default network offerings for the end users, virtual network offering and shared network offering without security group and a shared network offering with security group.Shared NetworksA Shared Network is a network that can be shared between many different users. Network Isolation on shared networks is done via other means, such as security groups. In pre-3.0, this is the Direct Guest Network. However, in 3.0, this concept is enhanced as follows:Shared Networks are created by the administratorShared Networks can be designated to a certain domainShared Network resources such as VLAN and physical network that it maps to are designated by the administratorShared Networks can have multiple network offerings, allowing an end user to choose the network offering to deploy their virtual machine withShared Networks are isolated by security groupsPublic Network is a shared network that is not shown to the end users.Guest Virtual NetworksA Virtual Network is a network that only the virtual machines of the same end user can be on. This is equivalent to the guest virtual network concept in pre-3.0 releases. Virtual networks have the following properties.Resources such as VLAN are allocated and garage collected dynamically.There is one network offering for the entire network.The network offering can be upgraded or downgraded but it is for the entire network
In this section, we’ll look at the user experience both administrators and users will have through the CloudPlatform management UI. In addition to this UI, Citrix CloudPlatform fully supports both a CloudStack API as well as an AWS like API.
The CloudPlatform management UI is completely web based, and provides access to all Citrix CloudPlatform features. The UI provides management of multiple availability zones from a single console. This includes all the zone configuration items such as Clusters, Pods and Hosts. Domain, account and user management is also covered as is all services definitions. Administrators can view critical system alerts, and see notifications resulting from all administrators in the system.
For users of the cloud infrastructure, the act of creating a new virtual machine instance follows a simple wizard flow. The user first starts by selecting which Zone the VM will be deployed into, then selects the service offering and any additional disks. The last step in the wizard is to select a network topology from the list of options defined for that service, zone and user. Once the instance is defined, the instance is created an the user can access it.
The user dashboard allows users to see at a glance the resources they are consuming. This includes all virtual machines allocated to them, as well as network resources consumed and the latest events for their resources.
Users have direct access to the instances they have deployed. This includes the ability to start/stop VMs, and to destroy them once done. Direct console access is provided, [click] as is the ability to see the resource consumption and overall configuration for the VM. [click] In the event they need to change as aspect of the service offering associated with the instance, they can modify it within the limits defined for their account.
Volumes are the core storage medium for virtual machines. Each virtual machine will have at least one volume, and depending upon the service offering may have additional data volumes associated with it. [click]Creating new templates, perhaps with operating system patches or application stacks installed in them, is done by first creating a snapshot of the volume, then converting that snapshot to a template. The created template can either be public or private.[click]Snapshots for backup purposes can be taken manually or scheduled as required.[click]The entire snapshot history can be viewed for a VM instance
The fundamental unit of account management in Citrix CloudPlatform is a domain. Within a given domain, a cloud operator will create one or more accounts for each customer/department. An account provides an isolation model which separates the offerings and provisioned resources for each account. Accounts have at least one user associated with them, and users are not isolated from each other. Domains can also have sub domains as required, and users can be delegated as administrators of domains. Cloud operators with a reseller model will typically define a domain for each reseller, while private clouds typically have a single domain.
The core components of a Citrix CloudPlatform implementation are:Hosts – Hosts are servers from at least one of the supported virtualization providers. Citrix CloudPlatform fully supports hosts from multiple providers, but does not convert VM images from one hypervisor type to another. Depending on the hypervisor, a “host” may be a higher level concept. For example, in XenServer a Citrix CloudPlatform “host” is equivalent to a XenServer resource pool and the “host” entry is the pool master.Primary Storage – Primary storage is the hypervisor level storage containing the deployed VM storage. Primary storage options will vary by hypervisor, and depending upon the hypervisor selected, CloudPlatform may impose requirements upon it.Cluster – Host groups are combined into Clusters which contain the primary storage options for the Cluster. Primary storage isn’t shared outside of a Cluster. In the case of CloudPlatform, a Cluster in of itself does not imply modification of any clustering concept within the hypervisor. For example, in XenServer a resource pool is a host to CloudPlatform, and CloudPlatform does not create a super set of Cluster functionality for XenServer. Pod -- Host groups are combined first into Clusters and then into Pods. For many customers, a pod represents a high level physical concept like a server rackNetwork – Network is the logical and physical network associated with service offerings. Multiple concurrent network service offerings and topologies can be supported within CloudPlatformSecondary Storage – Secondary storage is the storage system used for template and ISO management. It also is where snapshot events occur.Zone – A zone is a collection pods to form some level of service availability. While Amazon EC2 defines an availability zone as a data center, CloudPlatform keeps the concept more abstract allowing cloud operators to have multiple availability zones within a given data center.Management Server Farm – The CloudPlatform management server farm is a grouping of CentOS/RHEL CloudPlatform servers forming a web farm, with an underlying MySQL cluster database. The management server farm can manage multiple Zones, and can be virtualized.
Support for all NetScaler family of load balancersVPX : virtual load balancer appliance that can run on XenServer, ESXi, Hyper-V with throughput range of 10 Mbps to 3 GbpsMPX : Physical hardware based load balancer appliances with throughput range of 500 Mbps to 500 GbpsSDX : load balancing service delivery platform that can spin up (16-40) VPX instances dynamically with maximum throughput range of 8 Gbps to 50 GbpsAdmin is responsible for VPX appliances life-cycle. Citrix CloudPlatform will treat VPX like MPXCloudPlatform will fully manage the life-cycle of VPX instances created on SDXWill support Round-Robin, Least Connection, Source IP lb algorithmWill support source IP, LB cookie and App-Cookie based session stickinessSupport for both inline and side-by-side configurationsNetScaler Placement LogicCitrix CloudPlatform responsible for allocating a Load balancer device from pool of Load balancer devices in the physical networkA load balancer is chosen with maximum free capacityAuto-provision VPX instances on NetScaler SDX when there is insufficient capacityDestroy VPX instance on NetScaler SDX when no guest network is using it
Primary StoragePrimary storage is used for all active VM storage of both root and data disks. This storage is local to the CloudPlatform Pod and is directly available to the hypervisors hosts in the pod. The two universally supported connection methods are NFS and iSCSI, and CloudPlatform manages these connections. Additionally, options exist for FC and local storage, but these options do vary by hypervisor type. New for CloudStack 3.0 is OpenStack Swift integration.Secondary StorageSecondary storage is used for all template, ISO and volume snapshot activities. This storage is local to each CloudPlatform availability zone and is accessed through the CloudPlatform secondary storage server. This system VM connects to the underlying secondary storage device using NFS.Templates and ISOsTemplates and ISOs are imported into CloudPlatform secondary storage through the use of the storage system VM. The import process is through HTTP. ISOs can be defined as being bootable, and templates must be of a file type which matches hypervisors within the zone. CloudPlatform won’t convert a template from one hypervisor disk format to another.
See hypervisor notes for full detailsXenServerCitrix CloudPlatform includes and entitlement for XenServer Advanced edition. When using XenServer, you will first add the XenServer pool master to CloudPlatform as a host, and CloudPlatform will transparently add all slave hosts to CloudPlatform. Oracle VMLimitations: No snapshot because OVM is using raw format for volumeNo system VM because OVM won’t support Debian guestNeed a helper cluster(xenserver/kvm/vmware)Advantage:Oracle provides lots of templates which have Oracle DB frameworks, applications built in, customer can quickly deploy Oracle serviceCreate templateCreate template from root volume of VMStart system VMAdd a helper cluster(XenServer/KVM/Vmware) before creating any OVM VmThe domain router will automatically be created in helper cluster when creating first OVM instanceNo OVM manager and CloudPlatform mixedOvs-agent will store data in local database on hostSupported OS typeAll Linux/Solaris templates must be from Oracle siteWindows can be installed from ISOOracle Cluster File SystemOracle recommendation solution for using ISCSIUser responsibilitySetup ISCSI device on every hostCreate OCFS2 file system on every deviceCloudPlatform responsibilityConfigure every ocfs2 nodeAdd/Remove node on demandKVMFor KVM, Support is only for RHEL 6 based KVM and Ubuntu 10.04. No other flavors of KVM are supported, including RHEV.vCenter cluster/hostA vCenter cluster is mapped directly to a CloudPlatform cluster under PodA vCenter cluster for CloudPlatform can only belong to one vCenter datacenterWhy?vCenterDatastore used by vCenter cluster is at scope of vCenter datacentervCentervSwitch used by vCenter cluster is at scope of vCenter datacenterSharing vCenter datacenter resource outside of CloudPlatform will be problematicSystem VM bootstrapFirst generation is done by CloudPlatform management serverSecond/beyond generations is done through a running SSVMSSVM (Secondary Storage VM)SSVM for template processingSSVM for VMware volume/snapshot/template operationCommand delegationSystem VM, extension of CloudPlatform management serverResource manager can be running in context of a system VMCommand delegation in CloudPlatform management serverSnapshotsCloudPlatform snapshot is taken at volume basisSnapshot in vCenter is take at VM basisFill the gapTake a VM snapshot, if it is for a detached volume in CloudPlatform, create a worker VMParse VM snapshot meta data, build up disk chain information at volume basisCreate intermediate VM on top of a selected disk chainExport VM (full backup) to secondary storageCleanupsvCentervSwitchvSwitch setup is done through vCenterNIC-bonding is done through vCenterCloudPlatform creates networks (portgroups) dynamicallyCloudPlatform propagates networks across clusterWhy? To support independent VM live migration both in CloudPlatform and vCenterDefault vSwitch portsNot enough, usually needs to extend
These key features are all encompassed within Citrix CloudPlatform
These organizations all have built successful solutions using the flexibility and agility of next generation cloud architectures. Citrix cloud solutions enable these companies to provide the level of service their customers demand. Several of these accounts leverage CloudPlatform and XenServer as part of their overall cloud orchestration strategy.
When a user requests a VM instance, there are several steps performed.The user logs in and selects the desired availability zone for their instance, and then selects the desired template from the list of templates available to them. This is the trigger for the provisioning process.Depending on the instance and zone requirements, optional network services such as routing, dhcp and load balancing are provisioned for the zone. If these services are already provisioned, and can be shared by the user, then shared instances are used; otherwise isolated instances of the network services are used.The template representing the root disk of the VM is copied from the secondary storage for the zone to the primary storage for the cluster. Citrix CloudPlatform attempts to localize services for accounts to as few clusters as possible. This is done partly for security reasons, and partly to ensure optimal performance for provisioned services.If the instance requires any data volumes, the data volumes are created on primary storage for the cluster. Note that the storage preferences for the root volume and data volumes may be different resulting in the volumes occupying different primary storage devices within a given cluster. For example, data disks may have attributes which place them on a primary storage device which is continuously backed up while the root volume might be located on local storage.Citrix CloudPlatform then instructs the host to create and start the instance VM
Citrix CloudPlatform includes and entitlement for XenServer Advanced edition. When using XenServer, you will first add the XenServer pool master to CloudPlatform as a host, and CloudPlatform will transparently add all slave hosts to CloudPlatform.
Limitations: No snapshot because OVM is using raw format for volumeNo system VM because OVM won’t support Debian guestNeed a helper cluster(xenserver/kvm/vmware)Advantage:Oracle provides lots of templates which have Oracle DB frameworks, applications built in, customer can quickly deploy Oracle serviceCreate templateCreate template from root volume of VMStart system VMAdd a helper cluster(XenServer/KVM/Vmware) before creating any OVM VmThe domain router will automatically be created in helper cluster when creating first OVM instanceNo OVM manager and CloudPlatform mixedOvs-agent will store data in local database on hostSupported OS typeAll Linux/Solaris templates must be from Oracle siteWindows can be installed from ISOOracle Cluster File SystemOracle recommendation solution for using ISCSIUser responsibilitySetup ISCSI device on every hostCreate OCFS2 file system on every deviceCloudPlatform responsibilityConfigure every ocfs2 nodeAdd/Remove node on demand
For KVM, Support is only for RHEL 6 based KVM and Ubuntu 10.04. No other flavors of KVM are supported, including RHEV.
vCenter cluster/hostA vCenter cluster is mapped directly to a CloudPlatform cluster under PodA vCenter cluster for CloudPlatform can only belong to one vCenter datacenterWhy?vCenter Datastore used by vCenter cluster is at scope of vCenter datacentervCenter vSwitch used by vCenter cluster is at scope of vCenter datacenterSharing vCenter datacenter resource outside of CloudPlatform will be problematicSystem VM bootstrapFirst generation is done by CloudPlatform management serverSecond/beyond generations is done through a running SSVMSSVM (Secondary Storage VM)SSVM for template processingSSVM for VMware volume/snapshot/template operationCommand delegationSystem VM, extension of CloudPlatform management serverResource manager can be running in context of a system VMCommand delegation in CloudPlatform management serverSnapshotsCloudPlatform snapshot is taken at volume basisSnapshot in vCenter is take at VM basisFill the gapTake a VM snapshot, if it is for a detached volume in CloudPlatform, create a worker VMParse VM snapshot meta data, build up disk chain information at volume basisCreate intermediate VM on top of a selected disk chainExport VM (full backup) to secondary storageCleanupsvCenter vSwitchvSwitch setup is done through vCenterNIC-bonding is done through vCenterCloudPlatform creates networks (portgroups) dynamicallyCloudPlatform propagates networks across clusterWhy? To support independent VM live migration both in CloudPlatform and vCenterDefault vSwitch portsNot enough, usually needs to extend